Excerpt: Groping in the bathroom cabinet early one morning, her vision blurred by sleep, Paula Griffin grasped what she thought was her bottle of eye drops.

But instead she picked up an almost identical bottle of powerful nail glue and squirted it in her eye.

The blunder left her in agony and sealed her right eye shut. Relief only came eight hours later when doctors cut off her lashes and prised the eye open.

The glue could have caused permanent damage to Miss Griffin's sight. It is used by beauty professionals to fix false nails and carries a warning that it bonds skin within seconds.

'I was still really tired and I couldn't see very well, so I stumbled into the bathroom and picked the bottle off the shelf,' she said. 'As soon as I squeezed it, I knew something was wrong. It was really thick and gloopy - not like eye drops at all.

'I couldn't dodge the liquid completely. I managed to stop it hitting the...